India’s infamous Prime Minister, Narendra Modi while inaugurating the recently constructed parliament building on May 28 unveiled a map of the so-called Aakhand Bharat. In this imaginary map Modi named nine independent and sovereign countries whose territorial boundaries are demarcated and internationally recognized. They are India’s adjoining neighbors: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Tibet (Chinese territory), Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, Burma, Sri Lanka, and Maldives.
Modi endangers India
The projection of this map shows that India is surrounded by nine countries and they, according to Modi’s idea, will move around India like its satellites. But Modi and his surrogates forget the other side of the coin. He isolated India from all its nine neighboring countries of the region that encircle India from all sides, which are combinedly geographically, demographically, economically from India. They will huddle India inside and it will not get a chance to flee away.
On the other hand, India does not have any valid and recognized historical documents and maps of Akhand Bharat, except fairy tales, fantasies, fictions, etc. Modi’s bogus claim has been outright rejected by the people and political parties of Nepal, Bhutan, and Pakistan. As the controversial Prime Minister of Bangladesh Sheikh Hasina uses India to maintain her unelected government in power, she refrained from condemning Modi.
The Minister of Parliamentary Affairs Pralhad Joshi in a tweet said, “The resolve is clear. Akhand Bharat …” Through this comment Joshi expressed the determination of BJP to establish a so-called undivided and united India. On the other hand, BJP lawmaker Manoj Kotak tweeted saying, “Akhand Bharat in (the) New Parliament. It represents our powerful and self-reliant India.”
Observers believe, Modi’s ill-motive of showing India as a so-called superpower showing nine sovereign countries as the parts of its imaginary Akhand Bharat will surely incite them against it. They will surely form an alliance to counter India to protect their overall interests.
Observers predict that such an alliance will surely ask India to immediately withdraw the map, or preliminarily face, at least, an economic embargo. The alliance may stop commercial transactions with India. Alliance members should enhance business with their fellow-member countries or collect those materials from third sources.
If India does not retreat from its hegemonic dream and withdraw the slogan of Akhand Bharat, the alliance should sign a military pact to save their sovereignty and independence and deter India’s probable aggression. Such an alliance should persist, until India officially withdraws its hegemonic dream.
This map is a seed of rivalry which pushes the whole region to an eternal war. Modi has no other way or ideology to keep India united from fragmentation. So, he used the card of ultra-Hinduism as a weapon, which already became blunt as it has been used for a long time.
Observers opine that we do not live in an era of barbarity or in the Stone Age, when might was right and India could supremely dominate up any one of these countries. We also do not live in such an age when the outsider Hindus coming from Central Asia crossed the Khyber Pass and demolished Harappa and Mohenjo Daro civilizations, occupying their abode.
Aryans, in other words the Hindus, came to the Indus bank from Central Asia with flocks of sheep. They brutally killed the local people (known as Dravidians) who built that Indus civilization. Some historians blame the Hindus for destroying the most modern ancient civilizations of Mohenjo-Daro mentioned in Rig Veda (collection of Vedic Sanskrit hymns). So, the Aryans, in the truest sense, were outsiders and invaders, and they were not the sons of the soil. How do the Present-day Hindus pretend to forget or delete this truth?
The Aryan age also no longer exists. The days of the masters and the slaves have passed by. Might is no longer right. Now the age of conscience, legitimacy, justice, and liberty prevail everywhere.
Therefore, Modi threw the rotten idea of Akhand Bharat is aimed at befooling and bluffing the fanatic and communal Hindus to attract their votes in the incoming election of 2024.
Modi’s election card is a very dangerous one. He created and united nine independent countries around India as its enemies. During a volatile situation, India will be the common military target of nine countries, out of which two are militarily nuclearized and one is singularly much superior to India in all fields. Only ignorance can invite such an unwanted danger and impose it on its nation which still suffers from the challenges of being a developing country.
Modi and his predecessors claim that these countries are a cultural unit of India, which is absolutely untrue. Each of the nine countries has their own identical history, heritage, identity, language, culture, hopes and aspirations. Out of them four are Muslim majority countries- Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and the Maldives. These countries are religiously, historically, even culturally different from and antagonistic to India.
Anti-Muslim communality of Hindu leadership
The four Muslim majority countries do not have a minimum of a psychological relationship with the Hindus. Hindus germinated the seeds of anti-Muslim hatred.
In 1937, RSS leader Veer Savarkar was the first to come up with the two-nation theory, three years before the Muslim League passed the Pakistan resolution (1940). Congress leader Shashi Thraoor recently acknowledged this.
He also said during the time of Partition, the biggest question was “should religion be the determinant of nationhood?” He added, “… vast majority on the Indian side led by (Mahatma) Gandhi and (Jawaharlal) Nehru, and many others, said ‘no, religion does not determine your identity, it does not determine your nationhood, and we fought for the freedom of everyone and created a country for everyone”.
“Savarkar said a Hindu was somebody for whom India was his pitribhumi, the land of his ancestors, and his punya bhumi, his holy land. So, by that definition, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, and Jains filled both the categories but Muslims and Christians did not,” Tharoor quoted Savakar as saying.
“I have quoted Savarkar, M S Golwalkar and Deendayal Upadhyay in my book Why am I a Hindu? These were the folks who actually agreed that religion should determine nationhood…
“So, in the historical canon, the first advocate of the two-nation theory was actually V D Savarkar (Veer Damodar Savarkar), who, as head of the Hindu Mahasabha, had called upon India to recognize Hindus and Muslims as two separate nations, three years before the Muslim League passed the Pakistan resolution in the Lahore Session in 1940,” Tharoor said (https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/politics-and-nation/savarkar-was-first-to-advocate-two-nation-theory-shashi-tharoor/articleshow/73590565.cms?from=mdr).
It is this the Hindus who first claimed that Indians are not one nation, but a combination of many nations.
Nehru was not sincere in his outward claim that he stood for so-called secularism. In the name of secularism, he in reality worked for the Hindu interest to impose Hindu supremacy over Muslims and Christians. The partition of the subcontinent could have been one hundred percent peaceful if Nehru and other Hindu leaders were sincere in the rights and privileges of the non-Hindu inhabitants of the subcontinent.
Due to the non-cooperation and hegemonic attitude of the Nehru-gang, the partition of the subcontinent became inevitable. The provinces of British India were automatically supposed to be the parts of the Muslim homeland (Pakistan). But Nehru claimed that if India would have to be divided, the Muslim majority provinces of Punjab and Bengal would also have to be divided on religious lines, so that portions of Bengal and Punjab that would go to Pakistan, could come back to India soon.
In the case of Bengal, Nehru was more communal and crueler. He claimed that if India is divided, each village, even the homes of Bengal, would have to be divided. The British government subsequently did what Nehru prescribed and demanded. “We got moth-eaten Pakistan”, Quaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah mourned.
Presently, the same India cries for Akhand Bharat which it undid in 1947, claiming that we have a cultural link with common history, language, which is absolutely untrue.
Muslims of the subcontinent formed their own separate homelands in 1947 through referendums. In 1971, Bengali speaking people of Bangladesh broke free from Pakistan, but they did not want to merge with India. That was magnificent prudence and intelligence of the Bangladeshi freedom fighters and common people. Since 1971, Bangladeshis, despite many difficulties and problems, have steadily progressed, defying the constant conspiracies of the camouflaging enemies.
Fictitious cultural link
There are countless differences between Islam and Hinduism and between Christianity and Hinduism and Buddhism and Hinduism. Even Hindus are divided into several castes and classes. Different cultures, even the faiths among the Hindus of different regions are well known.
There are lots of differences between Muslims and Hindus. The Hindus believe in many gods, as Hinduism is a polytheistic religion, while the Muslims are monotheistic, believing in only one supreme God. Because of the polytheistic nature of Hinduism, it seems that their gods are present in anything and everything, while Islam believes in the divinity of Allah alone.
Despite living side by side in the same region, the pattern of food habits is opposite from each other. Some foods which the Hindus consume are divinely prohibited for the Muslims. Consuming pork and tortoises are socially accepted in Hindu society but banned in Muslim communities. Their systems of matrimony and Hindu cremation after death are also different. Their history, heritage and traditions are also clearly separate from one another.
Modi’s claims of having a common language, culture, history, tradition, costume, sources of inspiration and nationality and identity are absolutely false.
Hindus and Muslims, for these reasons, despite living side by side, under the same sky for centuries remained separated, isolated, even antagonistic to one another.
Hindus, throughout the British period (1756-1947) subjugated, humiliated, neglected, deprived, and exploited Muslims. How can Modi and other Hindus now dream of having a single country when the distance, difference and bitterness sharpened among them over the centuries? This proposal of Akhand Bharat is a new trap to enslave Muslims once again.
All other five non-Muslim countries from China to Myanmar have nothing in common with India. So, Modi’s mural of the fantastical Akhand Bharat comprising nine independent neighboring countries, will force them to be united against India, which will appear as a source of conventional and non-conventional wars. Any type of war in the South Asian region will be a sanguinary one for the whole world. The international community should deter India from its absurd dream of Akhand Bharat.
*Mohammad Abedin is a journalist and researcher based in the United States.
June 18, 2023
The viewpoints expressed by the authors do not necessarily reflect the opinions, viewpoints and editorial policies of Aequitas Review.
